By CHARLES ANZALONE

UB’s aspiration to become a “top-producing Fulbright
institution” took another significant step forward this month
when a record number of undergraduates were chosen as recipients of
Fulbright awards.

This year’s UB Fulbright honorees include seven winners,
as well as one student chosen as an alternate. These winners
include six students chosen for the prestigious Fulbright English
Teacher Assistantship.

Also among the elite scholarships awarded to UB students this
year are two Boren Scholarships, which support international study
for undergraduate students with an emphasis on learning foreign
languages.

“This year, UB has won more Fulbright awards and Boren
awards than we ever have,” says Elizabeth Colucci, director
of the Office of Fellowships and Scholarships.

“The Fulbrights are significant in that we have students
winning at both the undergraduate and graduate level,”
Colucci says. “In past years, UB has had between one and
three Fulbright English Teaching Assistantships, and this year we
have six.”

UB’s success in the Boren Scholarship competition is
equally impressive, according to Colucci.

“We have two Boren scholars this year,” she says.
“UB has only had three in the past five years, so this, too,
is significant.

Colucci credits Megan Stewart, fellowship adviser, and Colleen
Culleton, assistant professor of Spanish and UB’s Fulbright
program administrator, with raising awareness of these awards among
students and working with them to strengthen their
applications.

She also acknowledged the contribution of Walt Hakala, assistant
professor in the Department of English and the Asian Studies
Program.

“His assistance can be seen in our Fulbright, Boren and
Critical Language results,” Colucci says. “Students
become fascinated with East Asian history and languages as a result
of Walt’s classes. Our two Boren and Critical Language
winners were mentored and encouraged to apply by Walt.”

The roll call of UB’s latest class of elite scholarship
and fellowship recipients is as diverse as it is deep.

The seven Fulbright Scholars and their areas of study:

Lisa Gagnon, a graduating senior majoring in English and
linguistics, will study and teach English in Latvia as part of a
Fulbright’s English Teaching Assistantship. Gagnon, who also
studied music performance and plays the cello, says she wants to
teach and enrich the lives of Latvian students through music and
creative writing, while learning cross-cultural communication
skills to bring back to Buffalo.

“I chose Latvia because of the Eastern European heritage
of my late-grandmother and an interest in the countries of the
former Soviet Union,” Gagnon wrote in her Fulbright
application.

“The creative arts are powerful. Music, literature, art
and dance not only cross cultural and linguistic boundaries, but
also represent the very best of one’s own culture. During my
English Teaching Assistantship experience, I hope to learn about
and appreciate Latvian literature and music and my own heritage, as
well as offer a new view of American culture to the students so
they can better understand their own lives.”

Sushmita Gelda, a graduating senior majoring in English, will
study and teach in India, also on a Fulbright English Teaching
Assistantship. Gelda will lead a writing workshop that follows
guidelines to motivate participants to take risks in their writing
and reduce the vulnerability they may feel when sharing personal
stories. Gelda plans to offer Indian students the chance to
electronically exchange stories with students in Buffalo.

“I aspire to research how the English classroom can become
a place for critically examining the social processes that inform
language use,” Gelda wrote in her application. “I plan
to develop English curriculum that teaches students from diverse
socioeconomic contexts to blend academic discourse with
out-of-school literacy practice.”

Ashlee Hart, a PhD student studying archaeology and
anthropology, will conduct an archeological examination of
indigenous ceramics from late Iron Age sites in Thracian Bulgaria.
She will classify the ceramics across several sites, conduct
isotopic tests to source the clay and then use modern
archaeological theory to draw conclusions about the results.

“I will travel around the country to excavate
archaeological sites to create a digital, internationally available
database, both in English and Bulgarian, for published
archeological finds,” Hart wrote in her Fulbright
application. “This will allow archaeologists, students, local
Bulgarians and the world at large to see what Bulgarian history has
to offer.”

Farhana Hasan, a teacher of English as a second language in the
Buffalo Public Schools who earned her bachelor’s degree at UB
in 2014, will serve as a Fulbright English teaching assistant in
Malaysia. Hasan says she sees the diversity of Malaysia — and
the integral role Malaysia plays in the lives of Buffalo’s
refugee population —as an opportunity to expand her
international perspective.

“My specific civic engagement idea is to host a nature
writing club,” she wrote in her application. “I would
like to host local excursions in the natural environment and have
students of any age read and write descriptively about the setting.
Not only will this club establish basic scientific knowledge of the
student, but it will train the student to analyze, notice details
and inspire creativity.”

Hasan wrote that a visit to see her grandmother in Bangladesh
when she was 10 changed her life’s perspective. “It
opened my eyes to the brutal reality of starving children, child
labor and unsanitary environments,” Hasan wrote. “But
it also allowed me to discover and appreciate the diversity of my
ancestry.”

Sarah Stanford, who will receive a bachelor’s degree in
psychology and English this month, will serve as a Fulbright
English teaching assistant in Malaysia. Stanford applied for the
fellowship because of her “passion for empowering students,
my interest in working with culturally and linguistically diverse
populations, and my desire to learn and grow as an
educator.”

“With the large numbers of Muslim and Southeast Asian
refugees coming into the United States, I hope to learn more about
this religion and area of the world,” Stanford wrote in her
application. “I plan to engage the host community through a
bilingual interview project. Students will interview their families
in their native language about topics of their choice. They then
will work in groups to present their experience in English and to
explore classroom diversity. I also plan to create a class blog in
which students will share the interesting events and thoughts in
their lives.”

Michael Surrett, a PhD candidate in anthropology, received a
Fulbright award to study anthropology in Indonesia. Surrett plans
to study the Papuans who have resettled in another part of
Indonesia to increase their standard of living rather than waiting
for development projects to come to their province.

“I propose to study how the Papuans who have resettled in
Maluku re-established their communities, reinvented traditions and
subsequently built new local identities advantageous to them for
different purposes in a complex and growing Indonesia,” he
wrote in his application.

Jacob Caldwell, a graduating senior majoring in biomedical
engineering and Spanish, has accepted a Fulbright English Teaching
Assistantship to teach in an urban area in northern Spain.

“I will use American football to support health and
learning at my placement,” Caldwell wrote in his application.
“An after-school flag football program requires little
equipment while introducing a key piece of the U.S. identity.
Showing football films and games will complement the physical
activity. Introducing the variety of cities that host professional
teams will display the variety of American society. Finally, I will
play soccer as well, in order to ensure an equal exchange of
culture.”

Caldwell intends to pursue a PhD in biomedical engineering when
he returns to the U.S.

Antara Majumdar, a graduating senior majoring in biomedical
sciences, was chosen as a Fulbright alternate. Majumdar’s
Fulbright project proposed expanding the international education
program Beyond the Block in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the United
Kingdom.

“By working with students in a local secondary school, I
would like to introduce to them the work that biomedical
researchers are conducting in universities,” Majumdar wrote
in her application. “In turn, these students will engage in
digital literacy projects in which they discuss issues in their
communities with students in India and America.”

UB’s two Boren Scholarships winners also will study
abroad. They are:

Hanna Santanam, a rising junior majoring in English and
anthropology, received a Boren Award for her proposal to study
Hindi in Jaipur, India.

Santanam also received a Critical Language Scholarship to study
in Jaipur. The CLS is a fully funded, summer overseas language and
cultural immersion program designed to increase the number of
American students mastering languages and building relationships
between the U.S. and other key countries.

She accepted the Critical Language Scholarship instead of the
Boren, and will travel to Jaipur for 10 weeks this summer to study
Hindi. She will return to UB for the fall semester.

Santanam plans to use her new language skills to access the
archive of Hindi films in the George Eastman Museum in Rochester,
which is the world’s largest collection of contemporary
Indian cinema held by a museum or film archive.

“I will be able to use my knowledge of Hindi to further my
expertise of the history of Bollywood film as it pertains to
political and cultural change in India,” she wrote in her
application.

Kayleigh Hamernik, a rising junior majoring in environmental
studies with a minor in Asian studies. Hamernik also received a
Critical Language Scholarship, but chose to take the 12-month Boren
Scholarship to India.

She will study Hindi at the American Institute of Indian Studies
in Jaipur, Rajasthan. While there, her course study will focus on
conversation, vocabulary, grammar and reading. She also will take
part in such cultural activities as cooking, dance, photography and
drama class throughout the rest of the week.

Hamernik plans to use her training in Hindi to supplement her
interest in the effects of climate change.

“India’s rapidly growing economy, coupled with its
huge population of over 1.2 billion people, has created an
alarming, yet predictable result: tons upon tons of waste,”
she wrote in her fellowship application. “The rate of garbage
generation raises not only immediate health concerns for
India’s citizens, but environmental concerns for all global
citizens.”

Learning Hindi, Hamernik wrote, “is the first step toward
a career that will allow me to do what I love. While I am in Jaipur
for the semester, I will push myself to speak with as many locals
as I can and conduct interviews with them on their experiences
interacting with waste.”